Nutritional Status of One to Five Year Old Children in Rural Haryana: A Community Based Study

Abstract

Introduction: Under-nutrition remains one of the major causes of morbidity and premature mortality among one to five-year-old children in India. WHO recommended indicators used in the past for assessment of under-nutrition are overlapping and do not provide a comprehensive estimate of the under-nourished in the community. Aim: To assess prevalence of under-nutrition among one to five-year-old children of rural Haryana, using conventional indices and Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure (CIAF) and compare the estimated results. Materials and Methods: A community based cross sectional study was conducted on 1032 children, one to five-year-old (477 boys; 555 girls), in rural field practice area of Department of Community Medicine, AMCH, Shahabad (M), Haryana from January to December 2019. House to house visits were conducted to collect information from the child’s mother/primary caregiver using a semi-structured questionnaire followed by anthropometric assessment of the children. The WHO recommended conventional indicators of under-nutrition (stunting, wasting and underweight) as well as the CIAF were used to evaluate the nutritional status of the children following standard procedures. Z-scores were computed separately for boys and girls. Categorical data was presented as percentages (%) and Pearson’s Chi-square test was used to evaluate differences between groups for categorised variables. The p-value <0.05 was considered significant. Results: Our study results revealed 21.5% children as underweight, 30.2% children as stunted and 8.9% children as wasted according to WHO recommended indices. The prevalence of under-nutrition in studied children according to CIAF was found to be 43.7%. Of the studied children, 56.3% of children reported no failure (Group A), 4.1% reported wasting only (Group B), 2.3% reported wasting and underweight (Group C), (4.2%) reported wasting, stunting and underweight (Group D), 7.6% reported stunting and underweight (Group E), 18.4% reported stunting only (Group F) while 7.1% reported underweight only (Group Y). Conclusion: CIAF may be a better indicator of nutritional status in one to five-year-old children. The apparent advantage lies in the fact that it reveals a comprehensive picture of the severity of the actual burden of under-nutrition in a population.